


but I shall be good health to you

by Mira_Jade



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: . . . but they keep living anyway, . . . so bear with me, . . . the Civil War was not a happy pretty time, . . . though I try, American Civil War, Character Study, Emma/Hopkins endgame, F/M, Female Friendship in Progress, Gen, Historical References, Introspection, Medical Inaccuracies, Missing Scenes, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Sexism, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 22:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8640586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mira_Jade/pseuds/Mira_Jade
Summary: Once was, her father's hotel was the premiere destination for genteel travelers from Washington City to New Orleans. Once was, Mansion House was filled with laughter and dancing, with color and light and life. Now . . . it is a place of sickness, a house of blood and battle horror and death . . . and yet, every so often, it was also a house of healing . . . a place of mercy.Through the occupation of Alexandria: Emma Green, and a journey of self. A collection of missing moments.





	

_“You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,_  
_But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,_  
_And filter and fibre your blood._  
  
_Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,_  
_Missing me one place search another,_  
_I stop somewhere waiting for you.”_  
  
~ Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

  
  
  
The Alexandria she lived in was not the Alexandria she had grown in; remembered; adored.  
  
The port-town had always been a bustling city, with steamships gliding through the canals and clippers bobbing patiently in the wharves. Once was, merchant vessels swollen with cotton and sugar and coal cut gracefully through the tides, bound for the northern states and far across the ocean to Europe and beyond. The squat liners connecting passengers with Baltimore and Richmond, and the ferry boats ever criss-crossing the river to Washington city were now silent. Only troops and government officials used those transports now; for civilian folk, more were those trying to escape the bonds of Alexandria rather than find their way in. Not even a year ago those merry barges would have carried the gay, bright faces of travelers returned and travelers just embarking; now they hauled in the wounded and the dying from the battlefields, even as they tramped out fresh green boys to wage war in their comrades' place. All but overnight, the Potomac had seemingly become a tributary of the river Styx; claiming souls for its own and ferrying demons to Hades' bleak domain. No matter that its currents were still the same green-blue ripples underneath the same cheerful yellow sun, Emma Green could not recognize the river any longer; the waters so long cradling her home were now foreign to her.  
  
The streets were still busy in a gross mirroring of the city before her attempted secession, with the roads bustling in an ever chaotic press of man and beast. Now, rather than fashionable souls flocking about town on business and pleasure, there were only army men leading dray horses and carts laden with spoils and supplies to fuel President Lincoln's warmongering. Soldiers strode in crisp formation from one assignment to the next; some off duty men sang drunkenly from the few ale houses that had remained open to serve Alexandria's sudden influx of paying patrons; too many rag-tag men hobbled by with missing legs, whilst others bore sleeves emptily billowing for the want of arms and hands. There were few fine carriages and ladies in their elegant summer dresses out on the streets. It was the season for pinks and whites and creamy yellows, but crinoline did not flutter, nor did parasols twirl to protect fair faces from the heat of the August sun; lemonade was not sipped, socials were not gathered; berries were not plucked and pressed into jams and preserves. Few of the great families of repute remained in Alexandria at all; their homes were boarded up and left abandoned as those who could flee, fled. The once industrious factories and buildings of commerce now stood empty of their intended purposes, with the soldiers since putting the vacated buildings to their own selfish uses in running the machine of war. The schools had long been absent the laughter of children; now, soldiers were billeted where once learning had held its guiding hand above all others. The bells at St. Paul's no longer rung – she'd since learned that the sacred building was reassigned as a Union hospital, with its pews ripped out to house the wounded and the dying, succoring blood and furnishing disease rather than promoting godly peace and holy devotion during a time when such reminders were more dearly needed than ever.  
  
Her city was an occupied city, strapped with chains and denied the inalienable rights of free-will and the justice inherent in a country _by the people, for the people_. Emma knew the impotent tears Alexandria shed better than most, with her family having long been cast from their beds and leashed to their little house on Prince street instead. Oh, the home where her parents started their married life was fine enough, but it was nothing compared to the great Carlyle mansion they had kept since her earliest memories next to her father's hotel – whose quarters were now used to keep the provost marshal in the comfort he believed his stolen station implied. The smaller residence was particularly wanting when she thought about her family's farm at the Grove, which was no doubt verdant and lovely with its sparkling blue waters and its ripening fields, just as it was every summer . . . but the Green family was not allowed to quit the city for their country-home, not that season, and her longing to escape the heat and the feculent scent clinging to the city in the clammy embrace of July and August went for naught.  
  
To add insult to injury, they were then expected to share their diminutive dwelling with as many Union soldiers who could be reasonably boarded underneath their roof – coarse, uncouth men who were not the most considerate of guests with their heavy boots and their careless hands and their greedy appetites. The first apples of the season were ripe to be had, but they were not available for breakfast; neither were there eggs, for the good fighting men took them all. The available butter was thin, mixed overly much with water to make the cream last; she further had little stomach for the bread and jam she favored over her option of stewed rhubarb. There was no milk to soften the meal, and even the coffee was weak with the beans having been rationed to last until they received a fresh supply. If not, they would be resorting to chicory coffee soon – again. It was a thought she little relished.  
  
_Revolutions_ , Emma testily reflected, watching her mother spoon her stew as regally as Queen Victoria in the face of the indecencies thrust upon her, _have been fought over less grievous insults - and in this very country, no less._  
  
The soldiers - so many of them growing boys, rather than seasoned men of arms - seemed not to notice the strange fare for breakfast they suffered as a result of their bottomless gullets. Instead, they casually invaded the family's dining room and remarked over the breakfast spread as if their hospitality was offered, rather than forced. Though the faces of the soldiers quartered in her family's home had become somewhat familiar over the past several months, Emma did not bother with learning their names if she could. One did not need to make friendly with a virus, or humanize the pox for want of its company.  
  
No . . . she was not her father in that manner. She was not, and could not be James Green's kowtowing and prostrating - as if by being a friendly face to the Union he could keep his neutrality and avoid being swallowed by the flood of blue engulfing their city. Better did she try to emulate her mother with her cool courtesies and her flashing eyes, her careful wit and her pointed tongue. Jane Green's necessary hospitality was still as a wasp waiting to sting, even as she lowered herself to playing the gracious hostess to _them._ She did not flatter with honey outright as James Green did, but instead chose her barbs as cloves caught up in molasses as a true southern lady ought.  
  
_Frank_ , Emma thought more than once as the winter before gave way to spring and then to summer, _would not have stood for this._ _H_ _e would_ _not_ _have let such a swarm of locusts flock over everything he had worked for and built in life. He would have -_  

. . . yet, while she knew with a certainty what Frank would not have stood for, she was yet unsure as to what he would have been able to do differently. _Flee_ sounded like the only reasonable option at times – taking flight into the embrace of the deep south and perhaps further west to her mother's kin in Texas. _Let them have it all while we keep our dignity and our pride._ Yet, that too felt like a defeat in its own way.  
  
So she continued to let Belinda curl her hair and lace her into her summer gowns and grand hoop skirts as if she had somewhere worthwhile to be, as if she was not instead a prisoner of her own city, her own house. She continued to read on her own accord and keep up the best she could with her studies, with the woman’s seminary having long been closed under the pall of occupation. She wrote to her two elder sisters, both living out of the house with families of their own - with each of them wed to Stringfellow men as _she_ should have been that year. She made baskets with her mother for their neighbors who lost husbands and sons, even though they had to carefully measure their association with the cold eyes of the Union watching their every move. Mostly, she left the house only for church, and, even then, not for a church of her own people, her own faith. With St. Paul's having been lost to them, they resigned themselves to listening to a Union approved clergyman speaking from his stolen pulpit. Instead of the comforting words championing the constitutional and god-given rights of the South, they were treated to ministers of the North who sought to reclaim their straying sheep, and, most Sundays, she found that she could bear to hear them not.  
  
Her world spun in stagnation as the autumn months threatened to descend upon them. Her days were static, looking at the same rooms and halls, the same faces of her family whilst their uniformed guests seemingly changed with every other day of the week. Inside, Emma Green wanted to scream, to howl in outrage as some wild, untamed thing; outside, she clenched her fists, fixed her smiles, and carried on as was expected of her. This war would not last much longer – men like Frank and Tom Fairfax would not allow it to. She merely had to be patient until then. It was a woman's curse to wait and worry and battle in their own way while their men physically manned the frontlines of war, her mother had whispered when she confided her heart-sickness and worries early in their conflict . . . and so, wait and worry she silently would until a better day dawned.  
  
  
  
.

.  
  
That morning early in August was the same as most other mornings; at first, she had little reason to expect her day to be at all different from any other. As Belinda laced her into her dress, Emma only planned to read in the library and write to her sisters before helping her mother decide the meal plan for the rest of the week. Perhaps she would sew with the ladies of her mother's circle a bit; perhaps she would write to Frank again. That week, they had not enough of a surplus to make baskets for those in need. Perhaps, they soon they would, and Emma could then apply herself to aiding her countrymen in that little way she could.  
  
Yet, until then . . .  
  
_“What I cannot understand is why we are bringing in_ their _wounded.”_  
  
“ _Virginia_ _boys, here?”_  
  
_“Butternuts, six of them,_ _I hear_ _.”_  
  
“ _Taking from the care our men need?_ _I say, leave them for the buzzards.”_  
  
. . . and her heart lurched in her chest, jarred into awareness between one step and the next as she listened to the soldiers speaking on the landing below; they did not whisper, they did not modulate their voices, no matter their awareness of their hosts' loyalties. Emma sucked in a shuddering breath, feeling her pulse pound sluggishly through her veins as a newly awakening thing, just as the first warm currents that broke through the ice on the river with the promise of spring. Her newly conscious sense of purpose was as a young shoot of green in the cold; her spirit thawed, and she thought . . .  
  
_Frank._  
  
It was a long shot, her every sense told her. She had not heard from him in months – not since the spring, and she had no idea if he yet lived or died. Her letters were swallowed up in the void, she sometimes felt, and after hearing not a word from him in so long, she feared . . .  
  
. . . _Frank,_ _Frank, Frank._ No matter the rational sense of her higher reasoning, her heart stubbornly pulsed his name – as if to tattoo its letters onto her very bones. For, if he _was_ there, or if one of these men had news of him . . .  
  
_You are being_ _a_ _fanciful,_ _stupid girl,_ _Emma Green_ , she scolded herself. _General Jackson has nearly twenty thousand boys fighting at Cedar Run; it's likely as all that you'll know not a familiar face out of six._  
  
And yet, even so . . . suppose she did not find her beau . . . there were still brothers in arms who could no doubt use a cheering face and a comforting presence, were there not? Right within her reach to aid, there were compatriots languishing where they were doubtlessly refused any basic kindnesses and the simplest staples of human decency from their Union caregivers. _Leave them for the buzzards_ , the one soldier had scoffed, and the second had not disagreed, but rather _laughed_ . . . How did the Union sawbones treat these Confederate men? she wondered. How tenderly did the Union nurses see to their care?  
  
Women . . . women were slowly being accepted as nurses for patients once the male doctors had seen to them. For, was that not how God himself had created the female, to both nurture and protect those under her care? The profession of nursing - a task born out of the same marrow that assigned girls to grow and thrive as wives and mothers - was slowly losing its stigma as such a dreadful, taboo thing with the onslaught of the war. Now, even if she could provide a mere friendly face when she had not the experience or the know-how to provide any other such care . . .  
  
Though her father's hotel had been in use by the Yankees as a hospital since the previous November, Emma had not set foot in its halls since then. It was not fitting, it was not proper, she had been told, and that had been that. The Mansion House, once the premiere hotel from New Orleans to Washington city, was now a butcher's den, with its beds commandeered for the dying and its fine rooms turned from rest for the weary to a hydra of blood and disease. Truthfully, she had but little wish to see the degradation of its walls . . . little want to see the gilded rooms commandeered by those who ought not have been fighting within their borders in the first place . . . just as she had no desire to see the fine ballroom gridded with beds and the elegant dining room crowded with broken northern soldiers . . .  
  
_Where_ _do_ _they keep our boys?_ she wondered next. _How do they fare; how_ _kindly is their treatment_ _?_ It was a thought that nagged at her as she tried to set her mind to her Euripides. While there were always solders disarmed by a pretty girl with a pretty smile, regardless of the color of their uniform, there were those amongst the Union ranks who paid her little head - either hiding sneers outright or bowing with stiff manners to one whom they saw only as the daughter of a traitor. To her brother and father, their want of courtesy was at times even more glaring. _Secesh_ , the muttered under their breath; _Grey Backs_ , others snickered when they thought they could not hear. For enemy soldiers, brought in from the same battlefield where they recovered their own wounded and dead . . .  
  
Emma snapped her book shut with a dull sound of paper hitting paper, her mind made, her battle-lines drawn. From there, it was only action she wanted, and so act she would. Her fancy had become will, and she would now see her chosen course to fruition.  
  
To that end, she gathered what she thought to be essential: her Bible and her book of Tennyson poems, in case any of the boys wished to be read to; a jar of honey and some of the local blackberry tea leaves they had resorted to when the imported prices on tea rose; and a collection of dogwood flowers to pass out to the soldiers. There was not a Virginian man who would not smile at the white, happy little blossoms, and she wished to bring a piece of home, however small, to those who were so far away from their own - in both body and spirit.  
  
Thus girded, she grabbed her dainty lace gloves and her parasol to depart. She did not think to change her dress for the day. No . . . no. Her boys deserved to see a proud, smiling Virginian face in such a place; she would be a reminder of home to them in her hoop skirts and her familiar drawl. She could not imagine visiting them as anything less than she was.  
  
And, if Frank was there . . . well, then she wished to present a pretty picture for him for other reasons entirely. Yet Emma did not allow herself to think overly long on that possibility for the dangerous intoxication of hope, no matter how initially cloying its sweetness.  
  
Setting out without an escort caused her stomach to turn, but she knew that she would be forbidden to go if she requested one. How ridiculous, she would later scoff, that she had considered herself brave whilst merely making that short walk to the hotel. She thought herself a veritable Artemis, untouched and unmoved by the catcalls and the whistles and the jeers from the bawdy soldiers crowding the roadways. She had further thought the poor men lying in the streets around the block the hotel dominated . . . with their bodies bruised and broken and bloody as they waited for beds and care within . . . to be the worst of it. If she could endure such a pitiful sight as those poor wretches wanting for aid in the summer heat, then she could most certainly endure the comfortably bedded patients within.  
  
  . . . she would only know later, how great her illusion of self had been. The naivety of her assumptions was such as she would never recover again; that part of her, once aware, would not suffer to return to childlike visions of the world once more. 

Yet, then continuing in her ignorance, Emma walked up the steps of hotel the same as she had done hundreds of times before. Upon opening the door, the first thing that greeted her as her eyes adjusted from the harsh yellow sunlight to the half-light within was the rankness of the air inside the building. The reflex of surprise had her breathing in deeply, filling her lungs on the toxic miasma dominating the space – with the sour odor of rotting meet and unwashed bodies assaulting her nose in a yellow veil of scent from that very first moment. Underneath that overwhelming pungency was the almost metallic tincture of alcohol and medicine . . . and the more indescribable trace of animalistic desperation and fear . . . a scent she could taste almost as tangibly as a penny on her tongue.  
  
Emma took in a shallow breath through her mouth, and swallowed, fighting her initial urge to gag at the foul smell. Even then, she thought herself strong in the tide of sound that next assailed her ears once the shock of the air wore off . . . there were whimpers, seemingly everywhere surrounding her. There were screams from somewhere further on – upwards, a part of her mind distantly supplied, where they must be preforming the surgeries. Somewhere, a man sang - to distract himself from his own pain or his brethren from theirs, she could not tell; somewhere else, she could hear a man reciting scriptures; from yet another direction, a grown man sobbed as brokenly as a child. One called for water, she could make out a single voice; yet more disturbingly, one poor, far off voice called for his mother. Eventually, she could hear not a single discernible sound beyond the white noise suddenly filling her ears. The pounding of her heart turned deafening, as if to shield her from the cacophony suddenly surrounding her.  
  
Dumbstruck, Emma looked - perhaps somewhat stupidly - and expected to see the kind face of Andrew Ashby standing behind the receptionist's desk with his warm brown eyes and his affinity for practicing his jokes on the attentive ears of she and her sisters . . . but no . . . he too had gone the way of Frank and Tom, and she knew not if she would ever see him alive from the battlefield again. Rather than squeezing her eyes shut as she wished to, she glanced to the right, with the force of her instinct and memory nevertheless searching to find parties of elegant women and fetching men in the dining room, happily savoring the masterpieces Chef Brown created that day. Her eyes darted up the staircase, expecting to see fine couples walking arm and arm as busboys and lone travelers passed them by, but instead she saw . . .  
  
. . . an army of the half dead, her stomach awfully turned as her brain processed the images her eyes saw . . . a collection of patched and half-butchered men . . . as if raised from the pages of Mrs. Shelley's gruesome novel. All around her there were bodies in all sorts of ill repair, all bleeding and rancid and missing . . . _missing_ . . .  
  
. . . just . . . _missing._  
  
_I picked that wallpaper,_ Emma thought distantly as she walked into the dining room - the _former_ dining room - as if striding on a cloud. Although she was dimly aware of what her senses told her, it was as if she then floated above herself then, looking dispassionately around her as some deity from up high. _When Father built the addition and_ _remodeled_ _, I stood over the samples, and I_ _when it was narrowed down to two shades of color I_ _picked . . ._  
  
But the pretty blue pattern, so elegant and regal she had once thought, now swam before her eyes. She could not focus on it; she could not find the corner where she and Alice and Mary and Eliza Jane had scribbled their initials on the wall before the new paper was put up. Jimmy, her mind distantly recalled, and declared himself far too old - and manly - for such foolishness, but they had cajoled, and he had at last relented . . .  
  
If she turned that corner up now, would their names still be there? A part of her, in that moment, doubted it, for so changed was the very life of the building around her that she could no longer rightly recognize it.  
  
So immersing were her thoughts that, of course, she did not see what was happening right beyond the blind scope of her eyes. She was unseeing - she was too busy focusing on her ghosts to notice the poor soul she backed into, not when there was a very real, very _armed_ man - a poor, pathetic man made strong by an animal's savage determination to _live_ \- holding a gun and _demanding_ -   
  
\- her distraction served, though, and the patient was subdued when he was taken by the clatter and howl resulting from her clumsiness. It was over so quickly, with the shouting and the pain and the chaos averted almost before she realized it even started. She blinked, and the moment was done; the danger had passed.  
  
“Matron, escort that woman out!” she heard clearly enough, however, just as the poor patient whose elevated leg she had sent crashing down calmed under the orderlies' attention. “Any more of her Christian care may just get one of us killed.”  
  
Emma had never felt more ridiculous or out of place as she did then, picking up the flowers that had tumbled from her basket and trying not to concentrate on the flecks blotting the floorboards. Dried droplets, her mind distantly processed . . . of arsenic . . . and blood . . .  
  
_We danced across th_ _is_ _floor when Father_ _last_ _had_ _the wood_ _varnished_ , her memories ghosted across her mind in queer, flitting shapes. _Jimmy spun me, and Alice was_ _so barely out of girlhood_ _as Frank_ _twirled_ _her_ _too_ _before trading, and_ _I_ _-_  
  
. . . how silly that moment had been . . . the first time she knew awareness for the shape of Frank's mouth . . . for the bloom of heat spreading on her skin where his hand rested on the small of her back. Startled, she had tripped over her own two feet, and -  
  
\- he had caught her, she remembered . . . why, _why_ was he not there to catch her now? _Where_ -  
  
\- but Emma blinked, and closed her fingers too tightly over the last flower she collected. She felt the petals crush and stick to her delicately gloved fingers. Behind her, the disturbed patient continued to whimper in pain; his plastered leg clearly gave him such a renewed agony, and his suffering was her fault. _Her fault_. There was no dancing in this room, not any longer, her thoughts were a jarring echo to the reality surrounding her; there were no smiles and stolen looks and love and laughter. Instead, there was only the war, and the casualties it reaped - even far and beyond the physical battlefield.  
  
And so, too overwhelmed to bear her surroundings any longer, Emma fled. Though she hated herself for it – feeling as a startled doe in the woods when she wished to charge in and claim her family's rightful domain as a lioness – she quit the room without looking back. She held her sob in her mouth until she was out in the foyer, at least – safely hidden from where the fuming doctor and the northern nurse who aided him could not see – and she continued to control her running eyes until she ducked into a hallway, found a miraculously unoccupied bench, and then -  
  
\- there; she was crying. Her tears poured openly and her face reddened from the pressure of her grief as she sobbed as a lost child would. She hated every tear that came, and yet she could not seem to summon the will to squelch them. The months of it: of constantly smiling and having pieces of her home chipped away, pieces of _herself_ chipped away, all the while knowing naught of where Frank was, or how he fared, just as here in her family's pride and joy men lived and died like _pigs_ in the butcher's pen -  
  
“Oh, military hospitals and crinoline don't mix, dearie.”  
  
The matron of the hospital – sent to escort her out and keep her from further getting in the way - was a small, older woman with a strong Irish accent and such an air of obduracy and efficacy about her that, in an abstract way, she was reminded of her own mother. Her rugged face was touched by age, but her eyes were bright and clear as they studied her – piercingly so.  
  
Emma dabbed at her tears with her ruined handkerchief one last time, and heard her mother's voice in her ear as clear as if Jane Green was standing there beside her: _You are a Green, dear, now_ _get up and_ _act like it. Do not let them see your smile_ _fade_ _or your manners falter; that is a woman's weapon as much as it is one of the South._  
  
Alright, then . . . she, she could do this. She could.  
  
“The Confederates,” Emma found her courage to say, slowly standing to look the older woman squarely in the eye. Her stance, when she found it, felt firm and unyielding. Only she knew how she had to close her trembling fingers into fists, how the lace of her gloves still stuck to her palms. “I understand you have some?”  
  
“Why, yes . . . yes we do,” she thought that she understood Matron Brannan's smile for what it truly was, but she held her head up high and her eyes hopeful in reply to it, even so. “And you are just the thing they need.”  
  
Without another word, she was escorted back out into the foyer and off into another room – a ward, Emma reminded herself, for the Mansion House Hotel was truly a hospital now. As she looked around, she thought to make truth of that abstract concept in her mind; it took a long moment for her logic to settle, for her brain to process her senses as fact. Everything had changed, she knew, and she yet wondered how they could ever go back to the way they were again. Upon arriving, it took her a moment to recognize the front parlor, stripped of its wallpaper and its trimmings, so much so, that -  
  
“ - we had a threat of yellow fever,” the matron was continuing when Emma did not hear. “Even the paper had to go; we were slow to fill the room again after that – some being afeared of the bad omens and all, but now here we are . . .”  
  
Brannan flashed a smile - a sharp sort of shark's smile, full of teeth - over her shoulder. Perhaps it amused her - the idea that such a disease should scare her away, but Emma's mind could not settle on so mundane a matter as the threats to her own health as she walked to the first bed by the door. She refused to hold her handkerchief up to her nose to avoid the rancid odor of old sweat and days' worth of unwashed flesh . . . and the even more distressing copper and rotten eggs scent of dried blood and festering wounds. If the Union wards had been repugnant to her senses, then the men in this poor room smelled worse than all the Grove's hogs on a hot day. At least a pigsty was a natural effluvium to the nose; for these men - gods own creatures, no matter the color of their uniform - to be left untended in such a sorry condition . . .  
  
_Frank_ , her heart twisted in her chest as she imagined him in such a place as this. _Frank_. Her hands twisted over the handle of her basket, as if suddenly wanting for distraction. She forced her heartbeat to still, lest it affected her courage again.  
  
“Well then,” the matron's eyes twinkled with a dark sort of humor to say. “I'll leave the _belle_ to her fine gentlemen . . .”  
  
From her tone of voice, Emma knew, she was not expected to stay long. The Irishwoman expected that she did not have the stomach for it; she thought her as soft as the flowers that had crumpled in her hands.  
  
But, she had come with a purpose in mind, and so, fulfill that purpose she would. Resolutely, she untied her bonnet, and set her basket down. She turned to the first man, and, her heart in her throat, she begun her search for a familiar face.

  
  
  
.

.

  
. . . to that end, Tom Fairfax had not been the man she was expecting, but it was he whom she found, even so.  
  
Tom, while physically better than most she had glanced to see in the hospital – he was lucky that the shot went right through him – was nevertheless seeing ghosts and shaking and living far, far away on the battlefield even though he was physically there in that room with her. How he could not want to see her, not want to see _Alice_ , Emma could not understand . . . she could not fathom it, not even when he tried to explain the best he could in whispers and half-formed sentences full of abstract thought.  
  
He was awake, but still shaking, having since turned away from her in favor of staring listlessly at the wall. He did not whimper, he made no sound, but she could not help but feel as if some vast event played out before his eyes, one that she was helpless to interact with or assay.  
  
Tom's case file was hanging from a loop on the steel frame of the bed. Restlessly, she took it, hoping that it contained a hint of how to relieve his suffering. Yet, even to her untrained eye it said that there was nothing that could be done. All there was available to Tom was to work through the anxiety and the tremblings through self-control, or, a return to the battlefield to conquer his fear through the rigors of combat. Which, she flinched to know, Tom would not be released to any time soon. Her sister's beau was now a prisoner of war; she did not know what was going to happen to him next; she had no control or say over his fate, and her suddenly oppressive burden of helplessness drew forth fresh, frustrated tears from her eyes.  
  
But those tears were ones she refused to let fall, at least. Not anymore. Instead, Emma blinked away her sorrow and narrowed her eyes as she stared at the doctor's signature on the chart, already forming her battle-lines in her mind.  
  
She could not help where Tom was going, yet, she could help with what was happening to him _now_. She could fight for him where no one else could, and so, speak for him she would.

 

 

.

.

  
Patience was a virtue she had long fought to cultivate and now exercised in abundance. Emma kept her vigil, glancing out to the foyer again and again, ever hoping to see a doctor milling about in the press of bodies passing to and fro. A few orderlies, one nun and then another, a few contraband Negros passing by on their work – all mingling with too many broken soldiers in various states of ill-repair to keep track of – until, finally . . .  
  
The northerner in black was not a doctor, but she heard one of the Catholic sisters address him as a man of god – and now he was heading with a brisk stride from the ward in the dining room to the receptionist's desk. He did not carry himself as most priests of her acquaintance did, had been her first abstract impression. He did not hold his hands demurely behind his back, with his stride slow and thoughtful – as if he already had one foot in the heavens whilst the rest of mankind walked with fleshly bodies on the solid ground below. Neither did he haughtily hold his head up high as yet some others she knew - those whom she privately accused of vanity and conceit for their flaunting their positions as the Lord's chosen ones for earthly favor, rather than courting the unseen treasures awaiting them in heaven above. His stare was clear and focused, and his eyes looked straight ahead. In his own way, he had a soldier's gait, strong and determined - he moved purposefully, she concluded . . . a distant thought that she would only reflect back on later, much later, for then, in that moment -  
  
\- Emma seized her opportunity and walked up behind him as he hunched over to riffle through the desk drawers, clearly on the hunt for an item. Her first impulse was to tap his shoulder, but she instead curled her fingers in on themselves and cleared her throat. “Excuse me, Reverend?” she pitched her words as a question, and watched him startle to be addressed so. He nearly pitched the gas lamp he had perched on the desktop to aid his vision, and she watched as he hastened to steady it before straightening and turning to face her.  
  
He was tall, was her first thought thought as he looked down on her - tall and broad shouldered, with a back clearly made for difficult labor and heavy burdens. She blinked, for a moment wondering at the strange ways of fate that had him with a Bible in hand, rather than a riffle. _Di_ _d you escape the_ _pressures of enlisting by_ _taking the cloth_ _instead_ _?_ was her first mean suspicion before she chided herself for it. God called his shepherds, and it was unchristian of her to think otherwise without proof supporting the contrary. She blinked, refocusing her vision to take in the equally strong sculpt of his features – the square shape of his jaw and the sharp rise of his cheekbones. He had a naturally furrowed brow, one that lent him an air of brooding contemplation - or even intense sadness, were it not paired with the soft, kindly shape of his clear blue eyes. He was handsome, in a coarse way, she distantly concluded – objectively so, of course. Perhaps, some equally rough northern girl would think him very handsome indeed.  
  
“I-I'm Hopkins. Henry Hopkins,” was the greeting she received, in a voice that first stuttered between surprise and uncertainty before settling on a smooth surety. He did not strike her as the type to ever be at a loss for words - or poise in delivering them, at that. “I am the chaplain here at Mansion House, and at your service, miss.”  
  
Emma felt a moment's pang – knowing that her sister Mary's husband, Reverend Horace Stringfellow, followed General Lee's men in much the same capacity. If Frank too had been allowed to wed her and finished his seminary training, would she be a chaplain's wife in the war? But that was a distant thought, one that had no place without the privacy for her to indulge in her grief, and so she swallowed her hurt and looked boldly up at him to say, “Indeed you can help me, Chaplain. For a hospital, I am beginning to believe that there are no doctors here at all.”  
  
She watched him blink, for a moment taken aback - whether at the tell-tale drawl to her voice, or the tone of her words, she could not say. Frown-lines knit his forehead as he looked her up and down, his eyes noticeably pausing on the wide flare of her skirts and the pink ribbons that she had once been so proud to pair with the soft white cotton and lace of her dress. In that moment she felt strangely childish underneath his consideration before standing up as straight as her spine would allow in answer to his gaze. Summoning her ire, she narrowed her eyes in a displeased expression; it was uncouth for a gentleman to stare at a lady so, and she would not have it. She cleared her throat, and watched as his expression settled back into a look of polite geniality as he chose his words. His eyes found her own again, she guardedly observed; they did not again waver.  
  
“As you can no doubt see, there are a fair amount of men in need of care. The physicians are engaged beyond capacity at the best of times,” he pointed out bluntly, though not unkindly. “Now, with the wounded pouring in from Cedar Mountain they are tapped for time and resources. Even so, I know that they do their best to tend everyone in a timely matter.”  
  
“They endeavor to get to _everyone_ , do they?” Emma could not quite agree with his generous assessment of the Union doctors' competency. “I do not believe it; I have not yet seen any proof to grant me that opinion.”  
  
“They are endeavoring to see every man here, I can assure you,” Henry countered with a solid voice. He made belief sound easy to her ears. “It may not look it, but this hospital treats its men with the highest standard of care – it's the best of the best in Alexandria. The man needing attention, your brother . . . or your husband?” he amended, clearly searching for the right word. Something about his expression flickered, as if he wished to wince at his phrasing but fought to keep from doing so.  
  
“He is of no relation to me,” she confessed testily. He was of no relation of hers _yet_ , it was true, though she hoped to someday call him brother if he lived long enough to ask for Alice's hand. “Not by blood, at least - but he is my kin through loyalty. He is an Alexandrian, and I have long counted him a friend of mine.”  
  
“I see,” the chaplain pursed his mouth to say.  
  
“Do you? Do you truly?” Emma all but rippled with annoyance to return. “Because I have been waiting in this _ward_ for over two hours' time and not one soul has been by to check on the men within; not a nurse, not an orderly, and most certainly not a doctor. It is inhospitable, it is unchristian in the extreme.”  
  
“That . . .” she clearly watched Henry struggle for words, and took a moment's pleasure in his faltering. “That is an oversight, clearly. I cannot apologize on behalf of all, but I can extend my sympathies for your . . . countryman being overlooked.”  
  
“An oversight? I do not think I can excuse it so easily,” Emma resisted his attempts to sooth her temper. “I think that those tending the sick here see _quite_ clearly. I do not wish to rub salt in anyone's eyes, yet if I must, I shall. These men deserve the same care and compassion as any other soldier, no matter the colors they wear. You Yankees delight in declaring anyone belonging the southern states uncaring of our fellow man, but here I've seen a firsthand example of the same such intolerance and neglect _we_ are accused of, and I will not stand for it.”  
  
She could feel her anger seeping red into her words, but she refused to back down from saying what needed to be said. Her mind, nonetheless, whispered _caution_ to her higher sense – for rare was a man of the North _or_ South who would suffer such a tone from any woman, yet alone from a woman standing on the opposite side of the war then tearing their country in two. Even Frank would square his jaw and refuse to indulge her with a response when her passions overtook her. She squared her shoulders, ready for the fight she most certainly felt was coming, when the chaplain's expression shadowed . . . and yet, not with anger, she was slow to conclude. Instead, she was disarmed to see pity and concern shape his features – such as she was first hesitant to trust, just as she was thrown from her battlement by his softly worded, “I agree, miss; any man admitted here should receive equal treatment, regardless of their loyalties. Do you know your man's primary physician? I may point him out to you, and see what I can do about reminding the matron of your ward's care.”

“I seek a Doctor Hale,” Emma felt off-kilter to answer. Her words sounded as a question before she firmed her speech and found her sword again to continue, “It's his signature on Tom's papers - saying that nothing more can be done for him. But I've seen that Tom is not well myself . . . he . . . he's still glimpsing things that aren't there, with his heart racing and all but unable to breathe. I would like to speak with this doctor myself, and find out for a certainty that there is nothing that can be done to relieve his episodes.”  
  
“A Doctor Hale, you say?” the chaplain frowned to echo.  
  
“Yes,” Emma crisply confirmed. “If you would point him out to me, I would be greatly obliged.”  
  
A moment passed before Henry would answer her, and she felt her impatience spike once more. Perhaps seeing the return of her ire, he hastened to find his words – speaking low as if to avoid being overheard by anyone milling about in the noisy foyer. It sounded almost as if he were whispering a confession to say, “If it is Doctor Hale you appeal to, you'll find that he has already done all that he is willing to do. I would suggest our Doctor Foster, instead; he is Maryland born, and is a doctor, first and foremost, before he is a Union man. You may find some sympathy for your cause in him.”  
  
_Doctor Foster_ , she committed the name to memory. _Doctor Foster._ With a sinking feeling, however, she reflected that she had already met this doctor . . . and had left an impression that she was loath to recall herself, at that. Yet, it seemed that she had no choice but to reverse his undoubtedly tainted opinion of her resolve – and her competence. Lost in her own thoughts, she slowly nodded her head to say, “I thank-you for the advice, Chaplain.” The pleasantry nevertheless sounded stiff, even to her own ears. “If I must, it is this Doctor Foster I shall seek.”  
  
Henry nodded, seemingly satisfied that he had been of some use to her, and she watched as his attention turned to the desk again. He had paper and a pen already found, she noticed, waiting next to his lamp – enough so that she could easily guess what his current search was for.  
  
“And, Chaplain,” she added, with a more real softening to her tone, “Andrew Ashby . . . the man who used to keep this desk, he always kept reserves of ink squirreled away in the back of that first mail slot.” She pointed behind the desk, to where the shelves were even now filled with army correspondence. “In all of the confusion here, his cache may have been overlooked.”  
  
Henry tilted his head, and for a moment his eyes were considering as he studied her. He then turned away and with his height easily reached in behind the letters to find an untapped inkwell. Pocketing his prize, he looked at her with a smile curling up the corners of his mouth to say, “Thank-you, miss, I am indebted to you.”  
  
“I merely pay an eye for an eye,” she gave the least roll her shoulders to say. “The recipient of your letter will hopefully be pleased. Do you have someone back home waiting to hear from you?”  
  
“It is not for me,” he confessed after a pause. Whatever moment's compassionate conversation they had passed was then again shadowed, for the war never did leave even the smallest moments of peace room to breathe for long. “There is a soldier . . . a boy, really, who had no business in a uniform in the first place. He . . . I suspect that he will not live out the night. He has no hands available to him, and yet, his mother should hear his final words; his father was lost on the field, and had no such chance for closure himself.”  
  
Emma felt a familiar, sinking feeling bottom out in her chest, as if she carried stones in her heart, weighing her body to the floor. _Angels_ _too_ _were_ _God's_ _messengers_ , she wanted to say, but for some reason, the thought would not translate itself as sound. Instead, she found her strong stance faltering as she said, “She will be grateful for that small peace, I am certain.” If it was Frank . . . she knew that she would be.  
  
“For what peace it may grant her,” the chaplain sighed to say, the naturally brooding contours of his face taking on a grim cast as his thoughts undoubtedly followed a path next to her own. He drummed his fingers once against the desk in a restless motion before taking up his supplies and his lamp. He was quiet as he did so, and looked as if he would turn away from her completely, his quest fulfilled. Emma was half prepared to return to her own ward when he paused to meet her eyes a final time and add, “Remember, seek out Doctor Foster, Miss . . .” he shaped his voice to inquire, clearly realizing that he had never asked for her name.  
  
“Miss Green,” she supplied for him. “Miss Emma Green.”  
  
He was no doubt canny enough to tell the connection to the hotel – the hospital, now – in her name, she thought, but she did not see proof of it register in his expression. Instead, he tipped his head to her, and said, “Well then, Miss Green, it has been a pleasure. I hope that you find what you are looking for - for you have greatly aided me in finding mine.”  
  
“It was nothing, Chaplain,” she said, and then, with a last slanted smile, he did turn away. She remained by the desk for a moment longer, watching the broad line of his shoulders stand out above the crowded press of bodies before he was lost from her sight. He was, she thought for a moment, much like a boulder in the middle of a strong current, standing steady as the white waters around him fought to find the sea; he drew her eye and held it for his aura of peace and stillness, rather than his movement. But, she heard Tom whimper from within the Confederate ward again – her ward, she was unconsciously starting to consider it as - and then turned to tend to her own men until this Doctor Foster could be found. She did not spare another thought for the chaplain that day, and could not much imagine that he did for her.

**Author's Note:**

> Because, as fantastic as this show is, there were so many potential moments that quite simply could not be shown onscreen for the sake of time, I can well imagine. We understand that as viewers, but that is, delightfully, where fan fiction comes in for us writers. I simply wanted _more_ , and have since fulfilled my want and am ready to share. That said, this will cover the events of Season One without regurgitating any more of the show's dialogue than is necessary, hopefully. I have bits and pieces of this already written, and I will endeavor to update semi-regularly. To encourage that end, I welcome thoughts and feedback of all sorts; really, I simply hope that you enjoy reading this homage to such a fascinating cast and time in history as much as I have enjoyed writing it. :)


End file.
